Stories from a Californian who finds herself loving life in Virginia while attempting to mind her own business, a surprisingly difficult task.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Slightly recycled

I spoke in sacrament meeting on Sunday. I know you’re thinking, didn’t she just speak in sacrament meeting recently. Well, I was thinking that, too. However, that’s what I get for changing wards so frequently.

Because I know that you all would have come and heard me speak had you been within driving distance, I’ll share it here for your reading pleasure. It’s slightly recycled from my last talk. I was asked to speak on President Monson’s Talk: What Have I Done for Someone Today.

It took all my self restraint not to include references to Ken Fandell’s work. So I’ll include it now:

Mr. Fandell was having difficulty coming up with art. Instead of being productive, he got distracted by a picture from his marathon. He found himself in the picture, enlarged it, and sent it to his friend.

Then he realized how silly this was. Here he is, supposed to be creating something meaningful with his time and energy, but instead he focuses on himself and gets this pixilated picture that doesn’t mean anything. He decided it must be the most insignificant picture.

Then he thought. Hmm, what’s the most significant picture? He did a Google search and came up with the pictures from the Hubble telescope. You’ve seen them before: those breathtaking images of space.

Then he said, what would have happened if the Hubble telescope had decided to just transmit pictures of itself instead of creating art?

What would we have missed out on? So it is with our lives, if we spend our time focusing on ourselves and our inadequacies, we’ll miss out on becoming AMAZING.